Chapter Text
Day 31 - Wild Card
The door opened, and Leonard McCoy didn’t have to turn around to see who it was. He knew. After all this time, he still knew. “Well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t the ghost of Christmas past.”
The half-choked laugh behind him did turn McCoy around. And there he was. Spock had called McCoy, just barely before the media got wind of it. And it was a great story—Picard’s Enterprisehad rescued a mythical hero from the glory days of the Federation. And not just any hero, but the beating heart of the most famous Enterprises there had ever been—Montgomery Scott. He’d stepped out of a transporter seventy-five years after he’d stepped into it, and now was hovering hesitantly in the doorway of McCoy’s sitting room.
“Hello Leonard,” he said gently.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment, so many times,” McCoy sighed. “Although I wasn’t standing in a 142 year old body in my dreams. Will you please come in and sit the hell down, so I can sit down too?”
There was room beside him on the couch, but Scotty sat in a chair across from him, fidgeting awkwardly. “I see the posthumous promotion caught up with you,” McCoy small-talked at him, gesturing at the jacket.
“I’m a goddamned Admiral,” Scotty complained. He wasn’t in the wrong-colored pajamas that passed for Starfleet uniforms these days, but the dark jacket he was wearing clacked softly from the Starfleet arrow on his chest and rank insignia on his shoulders and collar. “And apparently still on active duty. I have meetings. At Starfleet headquarters. Tomorrow. It’s an order,” he snorted.
McCoy sat back, and wondered how to tell the man how badly Starfleet needed exactly his kind of blunt wisdom. How the Federation wasn’t what it had been. How heady explorers had somehow become butt-covering bureaucrats. There were secrets, again, petty fiefdoms as bad or worse than the days of Khan and the Vengeance. A prime-of-his life, genuine ass-kicking legend might just be what Starfleet needed. Maybe Spock had already told him all that. Maybe Spock had already begged him to come back to New Vulcan and jumpstart the completely disastrous Romulan supernova project that had been mired for decades now, and was running out of time. The universe still needed Scotty, even if Scotty didn’t know that yet.
It occurred to McCoy, on Scotty’s concerned look, that he’d just drifted off for a moment in thought, like some kind of doddering senior citizen.
Well. To hell with that.
McCoy jumped spryly to his feet and advanced on the engineer, who watched him with widening eyes as he pressed back into his chair. McCoy thumped a finger straight into his chest. “I told you so,” he hissed.
Scotty grinned at him, and good god, that was still beautiful. “Feel better then, love?”
“Much,” McCoy said. “I’ve been waiting 75 years to say that.”
That wiped the smile straight off his face, and Scotty leaned forward, his face in his hands. “I didnae expect it tae work. The transporter was supposed tae buy us a few weeks. Seventy five years. I still cannae fathom it. I dinnae know who I am here, tae myself or … anyone.”
“You’ve been gone half my lifetime, Scotty …” McCoy started gently.
“Forgive me,” Scott interrupted, dropping his gaze again. “For going away. And coming back. I’m not here with expectations; I’m not making any demands. I just wanted tae see you. I didnae expect you tae be alive, Leonard. It took me two weeks tae get up the courage tae ask the computer what had happened tae you.”
McCoy smiled faintly at him. “You’ve been gone half my lifetime,” McCoy repeated, and then continued what he meant to say. “And I still love you. But I’m not making any demands on you. I’m an old man, now. Twice your age. It’s going to take you about four months to catch up on the minor engineering advancements of the last seven decades, and then you are going to be so angry at them, Scotty. The theory hasn’t advanced at all. The supernova project is a ‘fucking disaster,’ and that’s an almost-direct quote from Spock. You don’t need an old man hanging on your arm while you go fix it all.”
Scott looked fiercely up at him. “I called Spock first, when I found out you were alive. And Nyota too, as it happens; I hadnae imagined that she was alive either. I didnae know what tae do; whether tae show up on your doorstep, or whether it would just hurt us both. And they told me that the long-mission Starfleet officers of our generation were living longer. Something about the transporter repeatedly scrubbing our DNA clean; traveling at faster than light for years at a time doing something tae the way time touches us. You’re nae an old man, Leonard McCoy, even with the white hair. And if you’ll have me, I’ll never leave your side again. Because I love you like a man who kissed you goodbye four months ago.”
McCoy reached for his hands. “Then sit with me, for god’s sake,” he begged.
Scotty got to his feet, and they both more-or-less collapsed together on the couch. And then Scotty was weeping in his lap, and the raw grief of it was surprising. But then, McCoy had grown through the grief. It had twined and changed and softened, in its way, as it had become a part of him. But here was a man whose entire universe had left him behind between one breath and the next. And McCoy didn’t kid himself. It was true, he was in magnificent shape for a 142 year old man. Hell, he was in great shape for a 90 year old man. But he was still in his fifteenth decade, and Scotty was in his eighth. His head whispered that this might be insurmountable. He was nearly surprised to feel tears running down his face as we wept with and for the love of his life.
The old grandfather clock ticked and chimed from the other room, and the shadows were lengthening when Scotty finally spoke again: “Tell me about your life, Leonard.”
“I will,” he said, stroking Scotty’s hair absently. “I’ll tell you all the stories. But right now, I’ll just tell you one. After you died I spent about two years pottering around. Gardening. Playing card games. And then one morning I woke up, and I couldn’t stomach the thought of spending one more day that way. So I marched down to Starfleet headquarters, reactivated my commission, and demanded that they put me on a ship. Do you know which one was just about to deploy? The Enterprise.”
Scotty chuckled in surprise.
“First time I showed up on the bridge, just to give the Captain hell, I think I scared Harriman to death. Technically I ranked them all, and so they tolerated me. One afternoon I dropped by to share some bourbon with the Captain, and he asked me why I was really there. And I told him I was searching for you and for Jim. It wasn’t until much later that I finally admitted the real truth to myself.” McCoy petered off thoughtfully.
Scotty sat up. “What truth?” he prompted.
McCoy seemed to change tracks. “I always felt like part of Earth, you know. Like it was in my very bones, and it called to me when I was away. I tried to explain that once to Jim, and he had no idea what I was talking about. I never bothered trying to explain it to you. But on that last mission on the Enterprise, it didn’t feel like that. Not anymore. All those years in the black, and I had become part of the stars. I wondered if that wasn’t because my true home—you, by the way—was still somewhere among them.”
Scotty smiled sadly, but didn’t speak. McCoy tapped him on the back. “Come on, let me replicate you some dinner. Before you moan about it, no, I don’t have ingredients for real food. I also don’t own any pots or pans. You can buy some tomorrow, if you insist.”
“I swear, Leonard, if you have synthehol … “ Scott started.
“I’m not a complete heathen,” McCoy answered, rolling his eyes, and let Scotty wrap an arm around him as they walked to the kitchen. He went for the alcohol cabinet when they arrived, and poured them both a healthy double. They toasted each other, a little shyly, separated by the counter.
“The point of my story,” McCoy continued after a long pull, “is that I don’t want you glued to my side here on this planet,” he said, and then raised his hand when Scotty flinched. “Shut up and listen to me, young man. The point is—I’ll go with you. I’ll live until I’m 200 years old pretty easily, and god alone knows what 75 years in a transporter has done to you. Everything is wrong, Scotty. Ten billion Romulans are going to die if we don’t save them. Starfleet is rotten. But I’m still here. Spock, and Nyota. Pavel and Hikaru. You, my love, you are still here. Let’s get back out there and save the universe once or twice more. You never know, maybe we’ll find Jim Kirk out there too.”
“Well, we’ll certainly keep our eyes open for him,” Scotty said, laughing in joy, and then leaned across the counter and kissed him. Seven decades of loss and sorrow melted away, and McCoy’s heart soared. Scotty hadn’t made it home for Christmas, but this was a new year. Against all the odds, time had turned again and a bright new beginning stretched out in front of them—and for this year and all the rest, they would walk side by side, where they belonged.